What is the difference between what Paul says Jesus is versus who Mark said Jesus is?

Answer 1

There is no necessary incompatibility between what Paul said about Jesus and what Mark, writing perhaps two decades later, said about him. Mark clearly described Jesus as a man who lived and preached in Palestine in the early years of the first century, performed miracles and was finally crucified and buried. Paul seems not to have known much about the life of Jesus of Nazareth, but wrote in more abstract terms. However, that need not mean that his understanding of Jesus differed from that of Mark.
However, some scholars say that when Paul wrote of Jesus, he need not have been writing about a man who died in the recent past. They cite evidence from the epistles that suggests that Paul is more likely to have been writing about a preacher or holy man who lived long before his own time.

Other scholars take the view that Paul did not even appear to be writing of Jesus as a man at all. They say that Paul spoke of a spiritual, not a physical Jesus. While it is true that he wrote of Jesus being crucified, there is evidence that several Middle Eastern religions had taught that gods and goddesses of the ancient past had been crucified in the spiritual world.